LAPD Officer’s Suit Targets Attorney Johnnie Cochran

A Los Angeles police sergeant filed a $10-million malicious prosecution suit in federal court Tuesday against attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and his law firm.

Sgt. Michael Long, 48, was one of seven officers sued by Cochran on behalf of the survivors of a woman who was shot to death by police in 1993 after threatening to kill her 3-year-old son with a knife on the roof of St. Vincent’s Hospital.

Long enabled other officers to wrest the toddler free by firing pepper spray into the eyes of the distraught mother, Sonji Taylor.

But after he did so, a Police Commission investigation found, Taylor lunged at him with a knife.

Taylor and Officer Craig Liedahl, 45, fired at her nine times. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The case sparked immediate controversy when autopsy reports revealed that Taylor had seven bullet wounds in her back.

An initial report by the district attorney’s office raised the “possibility” that the officers might have lied about their actions, but prosecutors later determined that the fusillade could have spun her around, causing her to be hit in the back.

The district attorney concluded that the shooting, while tragic, was not criminal. The Police Commission reached a similar conclusion, finding that the two officers acted within department policy.

Cochran, however, filed a $20-million Superior Court lawsuit against the city and the seven officers on behalf of Taylor’s son, Jeremy Jamal Taylor, and his grandmother, Geri Dixon.

The city settled with the family in 1997, agreeing to pay $2.4 million.

In his federal lawsuit against the Cochran law firm and Taylor’s heirs, Long contends that the legal action against him was motivated in part by racial prejudice because he is white and the dead woman was African American.

He also charged that the plaintiffs and their lawyers harbored “malice, hatred and prejudice” against him because he is a police officer.

Long, the suit said, “acted commendably” and his “conduct contributed to saving the life of Jeremy.”

Cochran, reached in New York where he hosts a show for Court TV, said he could not comment on the suit because he had not seen it. Long’s lawyer, Paul Rolf Jensen, also declined to comment. Long, now a training officer at the Rampart Division, could not be reached.